Generally in the art of printing processes there are two methods of printing products. Firstly, there is domestic printing using domestic home printers, which may or may not be able to print in colour. These printers are affordable, but a user is limed to the materials they can print on (paper or very thin card). Typically, the print quality using domestic home printers is relatively low, and the print speed is relatively slow. The advantage of domestic printing is that a user is able to print highly personalised matter relatively inexpensively: albeit possibly at a lower than desired quality.
If a user wishes better quality printing, they must employ a professional printer which is expensive, or purchase a better printer which can be very expensive.
When using professional printers, it is typical to print identical products because it is costly to change the set-up of the printers between print runs. As a result, the cost of printing may vary depending on the number of items being printed, i.e. the cost per item of printing a small number of items may be considerably more than the cost per item when printing a large batch of identical items. Alternatively, it is common for professional printers to stipulate a minimum order number and as a result professional printing may result in the manufacturing/printing of a much larger number of items than is actually required, adding to the cost of the required items.
It is a further disadvantage that the lack of personalisation and large batch sizes may result in printed information going out of date before the quantity of printed matter has been used. For example, business cards are typically produced in large quantities. However, if the details on business cards change often, i.e. address details, telephone numbers, qualifications, job titles, then it is feasible that a large number of business cards are wasted because they contain out-of-date information.
What is needed in the art is a way in which very high quality printed products can be manufactured using professional printers, but where the products can be highly personalised or different to each other. Furthermore batch size should be unimportant, meaning that one-off products can be made in amongst larger batches without increasing the cost of production: thereby improving flexibility while maintaining efficiency and speed without increasing production costs.